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.""Missy, I don't know if you two know each other—everyone else in Philadelphia seems to know each other.This is my my"—he hesitated for a second—"former wife, Cynthia."And suddenly Missy was back at Lagniappe on the night she had first met Felix; a series of still images clicked in her brain, images of personal humiliation as she apparently had lost Carl to that bitch reporter Laura Ramsey, the one writing the articles about the South Philly girl, and over it all she could hear Lois Fortier's voice saying that rumor had it Felix Ducroit was in town to get back together with his ex-wife.Well, it wasn't going to happen.She had the inside track, and this prim little person could eat her dust.Ignoring Missy, Cynthia fixed her attention on Felix."I'd heard you were in town." letting it hang there, as if to say, and I've been waiting for your call.The unspoken was picked up by Felix."Yes, I've been meaning to get in touch, been pretty busy."At which point Missy smiled sweetly, to make clear just how Felix had been keeping busy.Cynthia pretended not to notice."You're the talk of the town, you know, what with the real estate project you're doing and all.In fact, I got a call from a reporter at the Globe to interview me for an article about you."Felix clearly didn't welcome the news, tried to toss it off with "I hope you'll be able to say nice things.""You know I will," she said, and for a moment the primness was gone."Well, it's almost curtain time.I'd better get to my seat." As she turned to go she looked back at him, a smile in place."If you want to know how the interview went, give me a call."Felix did not reply, but Missy stood there feeling a tingling at the back of her neck.Ex's, all ex's, wives, lovers or whatevers always meant trouble."Your ex-wife is very charming," she said in a tone one might use in referring to a middle-aged woman, a small house or a gay man who could dance well."Yes, I suppose she is," he said."Were you two close.I meant when you were married?""In the beginning," he said, taking a sip of his drink."I don't mean to be nosy, but what happened?""l guess it's more what didn't happen.Children.""She wanted them and you didn't?""No, the other way around.""Oh.Well, that's sort of unusual.""I suppose." He seemed to want to explain."When we met in New Orleans a couple of deals had gone sour and I was flat broke.She didn't seem to care, and even when we moved in together she was the one paying the bills.She had some family money and she had a job managing one of those little hotels in the French Quarter.And she was damn good at it.I really admire her business skills.Anyway, I finally put a couple of deals together and they got us out of the woods completely, so it seemed a good time for her to stop working and have a family.""And she wouldn't hear of it?""That's right.I just didn't understand how much her career meant to her, or maybe how uneasy she was about mine.Whatever, I handled it all wrong, pushing so hard for children, and that was that."Missy, saying nothing, took his arm, squeezed it gently and led him in to their seats.What he had just said told her something about him that pleased her.For all his obvious strengths—financial success, good looks, social presence—Felix was also a man who, thanks to his sensitivity, could be manipulated.And thinking this, she remembered what someone had scribbled on the ladies room wall at Lagniappe: "Sensitivity is when a man does what you want." Amen.As the curtain went up and the audience applauded the set depicting the small town of Nagasaki, Missy paid little attention.Her thoughts were on the man next to her.She'd never had a man affect her quite the way he did.Most seemed fairly shallow creatures, useful to service her and be discarded at whim.Felix was different, more, as she'd felt from the beginning, in her father's mold.The good side of her father.He was the right man for her, no doubt about it.He was handsome and intelligent, rich and well connected.Sophisticated and yet down to earth.And somewhat remote, with a little mystery to him.She liked the challenge of that, though she had little doubt she would more than meet that challenge.She stole a glance at him.In profile he had an edge—a hard edge? She sensed that when he was ready he would be a demanding lover and shivered slightly in anticipation.His ex-wife, or the story of her breakup with him, had shown the way to what he wanted most—children.Could she do it? She looked without seeing at the unfolding romantic conflicts of Butterfly and Pinkerton.Even the thought of getting pregnant again made her feel sick.Much as she resisted it, that one time came back now.It had happened that summer when she was sixteen, the summer when her father had watched Roy Curtis have her in the boathouse.Afterward at home she'd gone on a sexual rampage.She had slept with anyone who asked her, done anything anyone wanted.She hadn't done it out of some need for penance or self-punishment.she hadn't cared a damn about that.but she'd cared about her father, had been obsessed with getting him, somehow, no matter how, at least to pay attention to her, with breaking through the wall that had grown between them ever since Roy Curtis.It hadn't worked.She'd gotten pregnant.On stage Butterfly was singing the aria "Un Bel Di, vedremo" as she waited for Pinkerton to return from a long absence, and the music kept Missy's thoughts where she didn't want them.She didn't know who the father was, didn't care.Her mother had been in Europe that summer.Edgar had been on "vacation," probably with her.So she had been alone in the house with her father when she had told him she was pregnant.In the darkness she felt the scar on her abdomen begin to cause pain and to burn.As always.The scar was twelve years old, but every time she thought about her pregnancy it happened.Don't think about it, she ordered herself.Not now.It'll ruin the evening, eventually ruin your chances with Felix.The pain, the burning, only came when she tried to remember what had happened that night she'd told her father she was pregnant.She could remember standing at the door of her father's study, waiting to tell him, feeling terrified.He'd been behind his desk, his hawklike face lined by the light and shadows of a desk lamp
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